Night and Fog (1955 film)
| Night and Fog | |
|---|---|
Film poster
|
|
| Directed by | Alain Resnais |
| Produced by | Anatole Dauman |
| Written by | Jean Cayrol |
| Narrated by | Michel Bouquet |
| Music by | Hanns Eisler |
| Cinematography |
Ghislain Cloquet Sacha Vierny |
| Edited by | Jasmine Chasney Henri Colpi |
| Distributed by | Argos Films |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
32 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Night and Fog (French: Nuit et brouillard) is a 1956 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The title is taken from the notorious Nacht und Nebel (German for "Night and Fog") program of abductions and disappearances decreed by the Nazis on 7 December 1941.
The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The music of the soundtrack was composed by Hanns Eisler.
Resnais was originally hesitant about making the film and refused the offer to make it until Cayrol was contracted to write the script. The film was shot entirely in the year 1955 and is composed of contemporary shots of the camps, plus stock footage. Resnais and Cayrol found the film very difficult to make due to its graphic nature and subject matter. The film faced difficulties with French censors unhappy with a shot of a French police officer in the film, and with the German embassy in France, which attempted to halt the film's release at the Cannes Film Festival. Night and Fog was released to critical acclaim, and still receives very high praise today. It was re-shown on French television nationwide in 1990, to remind the people of the "horrors of war".
Night and Fog is a documentary that alternates between past and present, using both black-and-white and color footage. The first part of Night and Fog shows remnants of Auschwitz while the narrator Michel Bouquet describes the rise of Nazi ideology. The film continues with comparisons of the life of the Schutzstaffel to the starving prisoners in the camps. Bouquet then addresses the sadism inflicted upon the doomed inmates, including torture, scientific and medical "experiments", executions, and rape. The next section is shown completely in black-and-white, and depicts images of gas chambers and piles of bodies. The final topic of the film depicts the liberation of the country, the discovery of the horror of the camps, and the questioning of who was responsible for them.
...
Wikipedia